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Frankly I don't know about that stuff. Is Lu He Ba (sp?) like the 'kernel' of what healthy-'natural'-powerful-cosmologically-aligned body movement is? If you adhere: you are? 'Threading the pearl'?

Josh, you're just mixing buzzwords. Liu He Ba Fa (Six Harmonies, Eight Methods) is the name of a fighting style; sometimes called "Water Fist".

Regardless of that guy who was on here a few months back insisting that "Liu He" was invented by someone in his Dai Family Xinyi Liu He, "Liu He" has been a denoting term on many CMA's going back into antiquity. The Liu He refers to the fact that the body moves "naturally" with the natural windings of the limb, torso, etc., in relation to the breath-developed strengths (where "kokyu" gets its name).

Threading the Nine-bends Pearl is about bringing I.S. to where you want it in the body. With intent.

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Dunno. If you want to talk about that I, for one, am definitely interested, cause, like I said, I don't know. Does aikido have an equivalent? Have you found that Aikido teaches about the body in that way? Is it supposed to? In my limited experience it did and it didnt.

Watching the pattern of my speculations/observations about Aikido and I.S. over the years, the trend is that I have to amend to allow that Ueshiba, Tohei, and a few others new more than I originally estimated, but less that "full banana" level of some of the so-called "internal martial arts". Aikido, as done by Ueshiba, appears to be an art that uses "neijin" (internal strength) and "neigongs" (internal exercises via misogi, breathing techniques, etc.), but it is not one of the "neijia" (internal family of martial arts) because it doesn't have the full-blown Six Harmonies movement.... but there are caveats too complicated to go into on this forum. So yeah, there are body-changing aspects to Aikido, no doubt, but it's too complicated to explain in writing.

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I always meant to ask; but it's by definition personal. I would love to ask this question to Ark, Dan and yourself, (and Toby, and Ellis, and anyone who would answer!);maybe even a question for Voices of Experience; as to how has your body changed for the better; and what specifically do you like and or recommend to do? This is in reference to the 'changing/tempering of the body'. I really like your explanation of the 'universal movement' . but i only saw that brief clip and didn't really see any interviews or anything. I would love to hear more about it. It is about the spirals right?

You have to learn to move differently. Most of the people now talking knowledgeably about "I.S." are never really going to move differently except in limited areas of application. So that's a "change".

You also have to train the body through breathing and stretching, etc., exercises. That will change the body the most. It will (if done correctly) repair insidious health, bone, joint, organ problems over time and strength will increase. There are practical reasons this happens (it's not magic), but it would take a treatise (and vids, etc.) to explain it on this type of forum.

Remember the anecdote I posted one time about one of my teachers breaking a chopstick by slamming his body/neck forward into the pointed end of the chopstick (the butt-end of the chopstick was against a brick wall)? The chopstick splintered into fibers and did not penetrate the skin on his throat. Stand a bamboo chopstick up on its end and hit straight down on the pointy end with a hammer, hard enough to splinter the chopstick, and you'll see what happened to the chopstick. He had "changed" his body all over like this by years of doing a certain type of neigong. It's change you can believe in.